Night prison officers acting as probation and parole workers

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MARYBOROUGH Correctional Centre supervisors working night shifts are now required to act as probation and parole officers.

The Chronicle can exclusively reveal officers from the centre are required to make contact with two released offenders in Hervey Bay and Maryborough.

Supervisors can also fend the task off to perimeter response drivers if they are busy.

A centre officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, spoke to the Chronicle about the new system.

"They're only doing this to say they have a system," he said. "But the system doesn't work."

When asked about the system, a Corrective Services media contact denied it was happening.

But after the Chronicle produced an email instructing officers to make checks on parolees, Acting Commissioner of Queensland Corrective Services Mark Rallings said using correctional services officers to conduct curfew checks on parolees was a long-standing practice.

"There is one parolee within the Maryborough-Hervey Bay area with a curfew condition," he said.

The anonymous officer said there would be no way to identify who was on the other end of the phone.

"It could be anyone," he said. "You don't know who you're talking too. It might not be the offender."

Mr Rallings said measures were in place to identify the offender.

"A selection of questions are asked to verify the person's identity," he said.

"If a call is not answered, the (correctional centre) supervisor makes a note of that fact for the information of the relevant probation and parole office."

Mr Rallings said no parole and probation officers had lost their jobs.